Jeremiah 20:13 – Pausing to Consider God's Stop Action Glory
Sing to the Lord! Praise the Lord!
For He has delivered the life of the poor
From the hand of evildoers. Jeremiah 20:13, New King James Version
"There are some men," decrees Kenneth Holden in The Making of the Great Communicator as he describes a car salesman, "impressive personalities – who can make you see the sunny side of a simple transaction."
For a beat, anyway, Jeremiah is able to wait in that spirit. He can't transact. He is in the stocks or following the Lord's call to proclaim in the Temple. Emboldened in faith in the ramp-up of the previous verses, he is calling for the Lord to not only frustrates the schemes of his opposition, but to sweep the field of them while Jeremiah is watching.
The way the prophet feeds that faith, though, in Jeremiah 20:13 is instructive. The same revolutionary power which Jeremiah proclaims is able to deliver him from religious and societal power in the wrong hands, that power has already demonstrated an ability to deliver the poor.
Even while Jeremiah in the stocks can't engage in the typical business God uses to lift from poverty, he celebrates the evidence of God's glory in everyday trade. Each act that results in saving, and giving, and worshiping as the poor are one step further from fear and want is active evidence of the glory of God on the march.
"Providence is God's sermon," connects Spurgeon in "Everybody's Sermon." The improvement of the condition of the poor is a revolution in slow motion, but the stop action, prosaic nature of His redemption allows us to overlook that those who were formerly poor are prospering. God's provision in this fashion happens so often we no longer notice.
We chafe at our own stocks, as Jeremiah will in the next verse. We constrict our frame of reference for God's operation to what He could do for us but has not yet.
As with the apostle Paul, physically confined but narrating the galactic advance of God's glory, John Calvin insists on a wider perspective, a more active antenna. "Life," equates Calvin, "is the theater of God." Tony Reineke widens our perspective in 12 Ways Your Phone Is Changing You, "What we see is given its fullest meaning in what we cannot see."
The alternative to grateful attentiveness, to portentous optimism, is more restrictive than Jeremiah's punishment. Russell Moore in Tempted and Tried warns us of this even before we sample the spirit of Jeremiah 20:14 and spit it out. Moore personalizes his warning, "The cosmic story intersects your personal story, and it's dangerous if you can't see where."
The danger is, perhaps, in demarcation. THIS is the theology I contemplate. But then I close my Bible, I end my prayer. Not as confined as Jeremiah, I put on my professional garb and cross my threshold to enter the world as butcher, or baker, or candlestick maker.
Putting on the blinders that go with that man-as-tool assignation, I no longer see my calling as a means by which God can enact Jeremiah 20:13 a little at a time. I no longer see each transaction as an opportunity to empower my fellow man, but rather, like Jacob Marley, as an opportunity to forge my own chains to my material identity a little at a time.
What an overarching blessing, then, that our Savior displayed the perfection of the Godhead just as much with every blow of His hammer as with every Word that proceeded from the mouth of His Father! By the tools and tedium of trade, no doubt, He likewise set the captives free incrementally, did justice toward the poor with His great heart AND with His calloused hands.
May this be the song, then, in the hearts of His own as we go about the inch-by-inch progress of our trade. Even within its constraints, none more confining than Jeremiah's, may we see the gracious usefulness of calling. Momentarily not distracted by the dust of doing, may we see the arc of justice bending toward the glory of God.
For He has delivered the life of the poor
From the hand of evildoers. Jeremiah 20:13, New King James Version
"There are some men," decrees Kenneth Holden in The Making of the Great Communicator as he describes a car salesman, "impressive personalities – who can make you see the sunny side of a simple transaction."
For a beat, anyway, Jeremiah is able to wait in that spirit. He can't transact. He is in the stocks or following the Lord's call to proclaim in the Temple. Emboldened in faith in the ramp-up of the previous verses, he is calling for the Lord to not only frustrates the schemes of his opposition, but to sweep the field of them while Jeremiah is watching.
The way the prophet feeds that faith, though, in Jeremiah 20:13 is instructive. The same revolutionary power which Jeremiah proclaims is able to deliver him from religious and societal power in the wrong hands, that power has already demonstrated an ability to deliver the poor.
Even while Jeremiah in the stocks can't engage in the typical business God uses to lift from poverty, he celebrates the evidence of God's glory in everyday trade. Each act that results in saving, and giving, and worshiping as the poor are one step further from fear and want is active evidence of the glory of God on the march.
"Providence is God's sermon," connects Spurgeon in "Everybody's Sermon." The improvement of the condition of the poor is a revolution in slow motion, but the stop action, prosaic nature of His redemption allows us to overlook that those who were formerly poor are prospering. God's provision in this fashion happens so often we no longer notice.
We chafe at our own stocks, as Jeremiah will in the next verse. We constrict our frame of reference for God's operation to what He could do for us but has not yet.
As with the apostle Paul, physically confined but narrating the galactic advance of God's glory, John Calvin insists on a wider perspective, a more active antenna. "Life," equates Calvin, "is the theater of God." Tony Reineke widens our perspective in 12 Ways Your Phone Is Changing You, "What we see is given its fullest meaning in what we cannot see."
The alternative to grateful attentiveness, to portentous optimism, is more restrictive than Jeremiah's punishment. Russell Moore in Tempted and Tried warns us of this even before we sample the spirit of Jeremiah 20:14 and spit it out. Moore personalizes his warning, "The cosmic story intersects your personal story, and it's dangerous if you can't see where."
The danger is, perhaps, in demarcation. THIS is the theology I contemplate. But then I close my Bible, I end my prayer. Not as confined as Jeremiah, I put on my professional garb and cross my threshold to enter the world as butcher, or baker, or candlestick maker.
Putting on the blinders that go with that man-as-tool assignation, I no longer see my calling as a means by which God can enact Jeremiah 20:13 a little at a time. I no longer see each transaction as an opportunity to empower my fellow man, but rather, like Jacob Marley, as an opportunity to forge my own chains to my material identity a little at a time.
What an overarching blessing, then, that our Savior displayed the perfection of the Godhead just as much with every blow of His hammer as with every Word that proceeded from the mouth of His Father! By the tools and tedium of trade, no doubt, He likewise set the captives free incrementally, did justice toward the poor with His great heart AND with His calloused hands.
May this be the song, then, in the hearts of His own as we go about the inch-by-inch progress of our trade. Even within its constraints, none more confining than Jeremiah's, may we see the gracious usefulness of calling. Momentarily not distracted by the dust of doing, may we see the arc of justice bending toward the glory of God.
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